Читать книгу Spartacus - J. Leslie Mitchell - Страница 12

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Spartacus, buckling on his Threce armour, gained the middle of the camp within a minute of the bucina sounding. Running to him came Castus and Gannicus. The German grinned like a wolf.

‘Nearly two thousand of them, so a shepherd says. There—you can see the gleam of the standards. The ravine still hides the main body.’

The Thracian bandit looked and saw the morning dazzle on weapons. It was an ill place to be taken in battle, with the marsh behind them. Then he smiled. There would be no battle. He turned his dark, staring eyes on Gannicus.

‘We’ll not fight.’

The retiarius, a Teutone, with grey eyes and red hair, heavy of jaw and bearded again since his escape from Batiates, swore, the blood running red across his forehead.

‘By the fat-bellied Gods of the Baltic, are you afraid? You’ll surrender?’

‘Not even by those Gods. Look, it’s a party of slaves, with stolen armour.’

All looked again. So it was. The party marched undisciplined, shield-flourishing. The red did not recede from the brow of the Teutone. But Castus laughed.

‘We still dream we’re in the arena. All but the Strategos.’

Gannicus’ temper went again. ‘ “The Strategos?” Aren’t we also strategoi?’

Castus was cool. ‘We are. Also, we’re fools. Had you or I acted as Strategos, Gannicus, we’d by this time have fallen on those two thousand slaves—who seem to number about three hundred.’

‘More Eastern rats,’ growled Gannicus, standing arms akimbo and surveying them contemptuously. For he had little faith in Eastern men.

The company of Gershom ben Sanballat entered the camp and looked around. For a little there was silence, the Gladiators and their allies leaning on their weapons, the Bithynians doubtful, half eager, half hesitant. One man of the company rode on horseback. It was Titul, the Iberian. He pointed towards the three strategoi.

‘The middle man with the gladius. He is the Captain. Mighty——’

‘ “Were the Captains of hosts in the vanished Western Isle”,’ said Kleon, hastily. ‘Even so. But they neglected to sacrifice to Jehovah. Or was it Kokolkh?’ To Gershom: ‘I think these Gladiators are more likely to welcome us as slaves than as allies.’

Grinning, the Gladiators and those who had recruited their revolt before the Battle of the Lake, surrounded the Bithynians. Said one, a Gaul, ‘These are small men, but valorous. This one was a cook. He’ll slay the Masters and pot them.’ A Thracian, with the hair on his chest matted in filth, glared and spat, for he had been a retiarius in the arena, and had conquered many with this glare. ‘Monkeys from the Circus. Hell! Are the apes also in revolt?’

A grinning Gaul wandered round the band, surveying it jeeringly. But suddenly he cried out in Gaulish, forgetting his Latin, and seized on one of the strangers, a tall man with large feet and a flaming head of hair, clad in a stained woman’s robe. At this onslaught on Brennus Titul snarled and leapt from his horse with drawn knife. Then he stood aside, and a mutter of astonishment rose.

For Brennus and the Gaul were embracing, breast to breast, and weeping and laughing. Brothers and twins, they had slept in the same stockade of northern Gaul, had been captured and enslaved in the same raid, had together heard the aurochsen low that last time they were marched south on the road to Rome.

At sight of the brothers’ meeting, the enmity of the Gladiators vanished. With laughter and horseplay, they embraced the Bithynians, rolling them on the ground, or weeping large, mock tears of rejoicing. The Bithynians grinned and submitted, chattering unintelligibly. Titul replaced his knife. Gershom ben Sanballat, tugging at his beard, pushed his way through the tumult, and stood at the foot of the central mound and looked up in the faces of the three Gentile strategoi.

He looked on the face of Castus, the Gaul, an ordinarius of the arena, the reputed lover of Spartacus—a young face, uncruel and uncertain. And the Jew thought, ‘No leader.’ Then he looked at Gannicus: ‘A bull, and brave as one. Pity he isn’t in Jerusalem. Salome dotes on bulls.’ And he scowled, for he did not share the doting.

The two strategoi of the Gladiators returned his gaze watchfully, as men prepared for treachery. Only the third stared over his head, with dark, blank eyes—dreaming, drunk, or was the slave mad? A queer conviction came on the Jew guerilla that he had seen that face before, and with the conviction a faint hope kindled as well. Disregarding the other two, he saluted the Strategos in the middle.

‘I am Gershom ben Sanballat, a Jew. I was a slave of Crassus the Lean. I’ve brought these slaves to join you, if you’ll have them.’ He scowled irritably. ‘Which Jehovah knows will be a favour, for without you the first band of horse will cut us to pieces.’

‘You are welcome, Gershom. I’m Spartacus, a bandit. These are Generals of the Gladiators, Castus and Gannicus.’

Gershom combed his curled beard with thin brown fingers. ‘They may be Generals of the army of hell, if it please them. I surrender my leadership of these Bithynians to you, not to those: who are doubtlessly very worthy men.’

Anger flamed afresh across the face of Gannicus. But Castus laughed. ‘Thereby you show your sense. We two mistook your band for the soldiers of the Masters, and would have fallen on it, but that Spartacus held us back. You already owe him your life, Bithynian.’

‘I am no Bithynian,’ said Gershom ben Sanballat, ‘but a Jew.’

Castus was indifferent. ‘A Greek folk?’

The face of the Jew aristocrat flushed with the old Hasidim rage. ‘My fathers were worshipping the One True God ere the Greeks came wallowing from the slime of their origin.’

The giant Thracian stared the simplicity of a half-awakened child, Castus shrugged, Gannicus sneered clumsily. ‘I’ve heard of your folk in Rome. They worship trade and usury, and an ass’s head for a God.’

The Thracian began to speak:

‘We have little food, and by this marsh we’re likely to be trapped. Elpinice thinks that another praetor may be marching against us. Camp your Bithynians, Gershom, but be ready to move.’

‘First I’ll deal with this Gentile swine——’

Spartacus stared at him with blank, dark eyes. ‘Camp your Bithynians.’

For a moment the Jew returned that gaze. Then he saluted again, and turned to obey.